Reason eats some Cannolis

“Paulie Cannoli,” a Kubby supporter and blogger who’d been unceremoniously de-credentialed by Third Party Watch, joked around and proposed that radicals make an end run around Barr. “Give him all the tokens,” Cannoli said. “Let him take the stage all by himself. Then get all the candidates back in here and tell C-SPAN!” Cannoli, who brandished the media credentials of former LP Executive Director Shane Cory (a man about as popular in this circle as Donald Rumsfeld), handed out Kubby buttons and asked for support: “A token for the tokin’ candidate!”

Nelson, why not just leave for the Constitution Party? I’ll even pay for your first year’s membership. Please, just go. Your continued participation in the LP, limited though it is, is getting embarrassing for real Libertarians.

I’m not for unity for unity’s sake. Having the Christine Smiths, Daniel Imperatos, Mike Nelsons, and other crazies head over to the CP would make life easier for all serious Libertarians, radical, reform and centrist alike.

“Nelson, why not just leave for the Constitution Party? I’ll even pay for your first year’s membership. Please, just go. Your continued participation in the LP, limited though it is, is getting embarrassing for real Libertarians.”

To defend disinter, other than attaching himself to unlikely conspiracy theories, he seems to take a fairly radical libertarian philosophy. Given that you’re the person advocating watering down the platform to attract voters, I find it especially ironic that you’re telling libertarian members to leave.

“I’m not for unity for unity’s sake. Having the Christine Smiths, Daniel Imperatos, Mike Nelsons, and other crazies head over to the CP would make life easier for all serious Libertarians, radical, reform and centrist alike.”

Imperato endorsed your prefered candidate, Bob Barr. It seems that you want to expel anyone from the Libertarian Party who doesn’t support Barr, even if they support the more libertarian options of Baldwin or NOTA.

Mike Nelsons, and other crazies head over to the CP would make life easier for all serious Libertarians

Why yes, real Libertarians leaving the party certainly would make it easier for the retard caucus to speed up the process of mirroring the Republicrats. Not gonna happen though. Voting for the CP prez candidate because he is MUCH more Libertarian than Barf does not mean we are joing the CP. In your demented little mind, maybe…

On the other side of the coin, it would be good for libertarians to leave the Libertarian Party, so that we don’t keep up the hypocrisy of spreading the message of freedom through electoral politics. (Not to say that it isn’t good to spread the message of freedom, just that electoral politics is by its very nature a bad medium). However, it might turn off people to libetarianism if the Libertarian Party is full of statists. More about this paradox here: http://praxeology.net/blog/2008/05/28/agorist-education-versus-partyarchist-education

I think the answer is that it is a matter of individual temperament. Some real libertarians should be in the LP, for the reason Roderick cites, and some should focus their attention elsewhere, as he also explains.

Personally, I’m getting more and more tired of pushing the rock of non-aggression principle uphill within what is rapidly becoming more and more the LINOP. Yet, at the same time I find it even more important.

I don’t want to throw a tantrum and resign; there’s no need to do that, since I am a life member and can come back whenever I feel like it. I just need a break.

I’m thinking the answer is a new umbrella organization that focuses on outreach, is non-partisan, focuses on issues where liberals and libertarians agree, and eclipses the LP in size and importance. I actually have given this quite a bit of thought; ironically, just at the same time as the LP more or less told me to go take a hike, the person I was talking about this plan at great length to – and to me, seemed in a position to make it possible – seems to have lost interest, for reasons undisclosed to me.

I may be wrong about that, but at the moment I must admit I can’t help letting it get to me; it is making me quite depressed, along with a few other things in my life.